


a lovely night

by prettydizzeed



Category: High School Musical (Movies)
Genre: Dresses, F/F, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, M/M, Makeup, Movie: High School Musical 3: Senior Year (2008), Multi, Polyamory, Prom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 05:01:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29254908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettydizzeed/pseuds/prettydizzeed
Summary: When Taylor opens the door, her brow furrows. Chad stands on the porch grinning and carrying massive a pink tacklebox, Ryan beside him with garment bag in hand. “Your fairy godmother has arrived,” Ryan says with an over-the-top wink, and Taylor can’t help her giggle.“And what am I, chopped liver?” Chad asks, elbowing him, and Ryan rolls his eyes affectionately.“You’re my beautiful assistant,” he says, and Chad blushes. Taylor lets them in.
Relationships: Chad Danforth & Taylor McKessie, Chad Danforth/Ryan Evans, Taylor McKessie/Gabriella Montez, Taylor McKessie/Gabriella Montez/Kelsi Nielsen, Taylor McKessie/Kelsi Nielsen
Comments: 10
Kudos: 83





	a lovely night

**Author's Note:**

> a gesture of gratitude & solidarity to all the wlw who comment on my chad/ryan fics <3
> 
> title from song of the same name from Cinderella (1997). taylor has natural hair in this fic because i said so

It’s the night of Taylor McKessie’s senior prom, and she has everything under control. Sure, her best friend that she’s maybe kind of a little bit in love with is hours away and Taylor has no idea when she’ll see her again, and the girl she has a crush on is just as much of a workaholic as Taylor to the point where she’s skipping the dance to make last-minute edits to the spring musical, and she’s waiting on her ex-boyfriend and his new boyfriend to bring her costume from aforementioned musical since she didn’t have time to go dress shopping, and then they’re all going to set up chairs together for a couple of hours before the event starts because she’s head of the prom committee and therefore responsible for stepping up when they’re short-staffed, but it’s fine. Waltzes are overrated, anyway, right?

The doorbell rings right on time and Taylor exhales a quick sigh of relief; it seems like Ryan’s been able to counterbalance Chad’s chronically poor punctuality. When she opens the door, though, her brow furrows. Chad stands on the porch grinning and carrying massive a pink tacklebox, Ryan beside him with garment bag in hand. 

“You gonna let us in or what?” Chad asks, and Taylor gets ahold of herself enough to click her jaw shut. She clears her throat. 

“I—you guys, we have to get to the school, I can’t—”

Chad shakes his head. “Martha’s taking care of it. It’s your night off, Madam President.”

Taylor looks between them in disbelief. She hasn’t had a night off—a real one, with no summer job shift to wake up early for or assignment to complete or event to volunteer at or committee to corral—in longer than she can remember. Seventh grade, maybe? It’s almost embarrassingly hard to comprehend, that someone would ease some of her responsibility just because, what, they wanted to?

“Your fairy godmother has arrived,” Ryan says with an over-the-top wink, and Taylor can’t help her giggle. This is all so much, right on the heels of the worst of her teenage angst. 

“And what am I, chopped liver?” Chad asks, elbowing him, and Ryan rolls his eyes affectionately.

“You’re my beautiful assistant,” he says, and Chad blushes. Taylor lets them in.

“Nails first, I’m thinking, and then hair and makeup,” Ryan says, efficiently transforming her utilitarian bathroom counter into a setup worthy of a Hollywood dressing room. The tacklebox, bordering on large enough to be called a trunk, is unfolded in front of him, a Hannah Montana-style elaborate toolkit for totally transforming a person’s appearance. But Taylor doesn’t want to be  _ too  _ transformed—she likes who she is, catastrophic nail beds and all, and she’s not interested in shedding all of that like so many dead cells in a montage of conformity to Western standards of beauty. 

She says as much to Ryan, as gently as she can, and he pats her hand and guides her to a seat Chad carried in. “It’s okay that you don’t know this, I get that it isn’t your thing, but I am  _ very _ good at what I do,” he tells her. “Styling shouldn’t be a one-size-fits-all situation, and I’m not going to do either of us the disservice of trying to make you look like someone you’re not. Trust me?”

“Yeah,” she says, nodding.

“There’s your first mistake,” Chad pipes up from where he’s leaning against the wall in the bathroom corner, observing, and grins at Ryan when he huffs at him in mock offense. 

“What, did he give you a lipstick that clashed with your eyes?” Taylor teases, but Chad’s grin only widens.

“Actually, I looked great,” he says, and it’s the upper hand he knew it would be; Taylor can’t do anything at that besides smile at how happy he is, how much he trusts Ryan, and hold her hand out. Ryan shakes a bottle of silver polish and sets to painting her nails with a practiced rhythm. 

When he produces a professional-looking spray bottle from the depths of the box and starts sectioning her hair, Taylor can’t help but get a little nervous. Chad is looking on in the same unconcerned interest as before, though, so she doesn’t say anything as Ryan proceeds to finger detangle the strands and apply the kind of expensive moisturizing creme she and her sister would’ve yearned for and never been able to justify purchasing. When Ryan makes the first twist, starting close to the root and making his way down faster even than Dominique used to when Taylor was in middle school, before she went to college. 

Ryan catches her eye in the mirror and smiles at her shocked expression, smoothing the excess product in and starting on another twist. “Anyone who doesn’t know how to work with natural hair is a racist and an amateur,” he says firmly. “I strive to be neither.”

A flurry of fingers and hair clips later, Ryan makes his way along the base of her neck, weaving the twists together into a braid that curves from one ear to the other. He leaves one loose, framing her face, and turns her chair around, holding up a large hand mirror. “So, what do we think?” he asks, and her breath catches. It looks elegant, honestly, each section starting out small and tight towards the crown of her head and growing in strength and volume like a river until it joins with the others in the braid at her nape. 

“I love it,” she says, and Ryan beams. 

“If you’re going to cry, do it now, because makeup is next,” Chad advises, and Ryan huffs.

“All my products are waterproof,” he assures her. “What does he take me for, an animal?” Behind them, Chad snorts.

Ryan does her makeup at the same intimidating pace, silent and focused aside from the occasional direction to blink or tilt her head a certain way. Taylor is pretty sure the foundation he’s using matches her skin tone better than the singular bottle she pretends to have lost on special occasions, much to Dominique’s unending frustration and bemusement, and while she isn’t sure the shades of eyeshadow and lipstick he’s using will go well with her dress, she isn’t about to question the process. Ryan has worn makeup more often than her, she’s certain, and when an aspect of your presentation is sure to garner you criticism, you pretty much have to become proficient at it in order to guarantee people’s insults are limited to the realm of their own bigotry. 

“All done,” he announces, capping a product she isn’t even going to attempt to guess the name or purpose of. “And now, the dress.” Chad takes the garment bag down from where it’s been hanging on the shower rod and unveils it with a flourish, and—

“That is  _ not _ my Senior Year costume,” Taylor says, and Chad grins.

“Everyone deserves a Brandy moment,” he says, and then, his gaze soft and fond, “especially you.” Taylor is overcome with a rush of affection for this immature, sarcastic, surprisingly gentle jock, and she’s glad that despite their distinctly unamicable parting of ways freshman year, they’ve ended up back in each other’s lives. 

She stands to hug him, and he wraps his arms around her. “Watch the face!” Ryan calls, and they both laugh.

“In case you’re wondering, yes, he’s always like this,” Chad says, and it’s steeped in such unbridled affection she could almost cry. Chad Danforth, no longer emotionally constipated—who would’ve thought.

It’s about as likely as Taylor McKessie showing up at her senior prom in a dress fit for a princess, apparently.

“I—I can’t accept this,” she says, even though she wants to, easily more than she’s ever wanted an item of clothing in her life aside from the valedictorian stole she’ll be wearing in a couple of days. “It’s too much.”

Ryan shakes his head. “It absolutely is not. Besides, if you don’t wear it, I will, and then I’ll end up in the paper, and my father will  _ not _ be thrilled.”

“C’mon, McKessie,” Chad says, elbowing her. “Redistribute the wealth a little.” 

And what is there to say to that, really, so she shoos them out of the bathroom and changes into a dress that is easily worth more than she made all last summer, light blue and shimmery and tailored to her exact measurements. When she twirls, the skirt furls out around her like a childhood dream made corporeal. 

Ryan clasps his hands together in delight when he sees her. Chad wolf whistles, which makes her laugh, and Ryan does up the zipper the rest of the way. 

“I—I hate to even bring this up, when everything else is so perfect,” Taylor says, “but—my shoes don’t match this.” It’s true, and painfully obvious; the purple chunky heels go great with her dress for the show, but couldn’t be further from an appropriate companion to a dress that materialized right out of a Cinderella movie if they tried.

“Not to worry,” Ryan says mysteriously, and before she can ask what he means by that, there’s a honk from outside. 

“I believe that’s our cue,” Chad says, and offers her his elbow as he leads her to the door. She steps onto her front porch. There’s a limo in the driveway. 

“Why is there a limo?” Taylor asks, even though she knows the answer is going to be  _ Ryan Evans has a big heart and an even bigger allowance,  _ but the voice that answers her, while familiar, isn’t that of Chad or Ryan.

“Well, someone had to drive me here from the airport,” Gabriella says, stepping out of the backseat, and Taylor squeals. God, it’s like a romcom movie, the way they run to each other, heels and all. Gabriella throws one arm around her shoulders and the other around her waist and holds her so tightly Taylor could cry beneath the weight of how much she’s missed her, how badly she wanted to share these senior year coming of age rituals with her when she thought that was out of the question. 

“Taylor McKessie,” Gabriella says, simultaneously earnest and tongue-in-cheek in that way she has, mocking clichés while also showing all of them up with her depth of feeling, and then she drops elegantly to one knee right there on the concrete. Gabriella produces a shoe from behind her back, clear and stunning, refracting the early evening light into dozens of rainbows, and she looks up at Taylor, her face open and determined, her smile as radiant as always. “Will you be my date to the senior prom?”

“I’d be honored,” Taylor says, and Gabriella beams impossibly broader and closes her hand lightly around Taylor’s ankle, guiding her foot out of one shoe and into the other. Taylor, feeling appropriately off-balance, grasps at a topic that seems the least dangerous. “What about the other one?” she asks, voice only catching a little on the breadth of her happiness, and then Kelsi steps out the car.

She’s—she’s a dream, alright, in a navy blue suit and silver bow tie, her curly hair pinned up in an elaborate bun-and-braid situation Taylor couldn’t dream of doing, and despite what should’ve been her wildest dream coming true literally seconds ago, Taylor wants so badly to intertwine their fingers, to feel Kelsi’s Chapstick-coated lips against the back of her palm. 

“Surprise,” Kelsi says, smiling and looking down, one hand rubbing the other wrist nervously. A shoe dangles from her fingers. “I—listen, Taylor, hanging out with you last summer was the main reason I stayed at that job, and like, I would’ve understood if you didn’t have time, but I was so excited when you said you’d do the musical this semester, and seeing you at rehearsal is always the highlight of my day. So I—no pressure, I’m not going to, like, hold your shoe hostage, and if this isn’t something you’d be into then that’s fine, but I think you’re fantastic, and I was wondering if you would want to be my date to prom, too.” 

“Yes,” Taylor says, barely over a whisper, and okay, now there are tears threatening for real at the corners of her eyes. “Yes, god, I would love to.”

Kelsi sets the other shoe down for her to step into and takes her hand, the one Gabriella isn’t already holding. Taylor looks over her shoulder to where Ryan and Chad stand on the porch, Ryan’s arm around Chad’s waist, looking on like the couple of self-satisfied co-conspirators they are. “Come on, boys, or the limo’s leaving without you,” she calls, and beside her, two girls laugh.

**Author's Note:**

> i’m on tumblr @campgender where i continue to be obsessed with high school musical in 2021, come say hi!


End file.
